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Presto Vivace writes "Greater Greater Washington reports that 'The New York Metropolitan Transit Authority's lawyers are going after a local blogger, and attempting to block an iPhone application showing Metro-North railroad schedules. The blog StationStops writes about Metro-North Commuter Railroad service north of New York City, and often criticizes its operations. Its creator, Chris Schoenfeld, also created an iPhone application to give Metro-North riders schedule information. Now the MTA is insisting he pay them to license the data, and at one point even accused the site of pretending to be an official MTA site.' I can't believe that this the MTA's actions are going to go over well with the public."

Not to mention stupid. It's their own best interest to make that information as widely available as possible.

Not that I agree with what the MTA is doing, but I can see where they might be coming from, if for no other reason from an accuracy standpoint. I'm sure they wouldn't disagree that it is in their best interest to make the information as widely available as possible. However, you'll note that it says that Schoenfeld enters the data manually. What happens when he has a typo or transcribes a column wrong and borks an entire train? Customers get angry because they miss expected connections and blame MTA not Schoenfeld.

Of course they've got other issues where they've supposedly got a deal with some vendor to provide some kind of mobile scheduling service, but I wonder most about the liability MTA could face if people rely on someone's home grown hobby and it goes bad. Sure in the end they'd come out OK, but there'd be lots of bad press and time spent cleaning up the mess.

As one of the posters to the blog pointed out copyright law isn't the proper way to go about this objective. Sadly it's probably just the first thing that came to mind when Director Somensmuck called Legal and said "Johnson? We've got a problem. I want to know what you're going to do about it before you go home tonight."

Another reason these schedules are not copyrightable is because the MTA is owned by the NY government, and the NY government is owned/funded by the People, therefore the schedules belong to the citizens of New York State. They are free to copy the schedules as often as they desire, especially since they already paid for them via taxation.

This is just yet another case of government forgetting why it exists - to serve us.

All legitimate power flows from the bottom, up, and politicians which forget this need to be fired & replaced.

Another reason these schedules are not copyrightable is because the MTA is owned by the NY government, and the NY government is owned/funded by the People, therefore the schedules belong to the citizens of New York State.

Authorities are not "owned" by the NY government. This is one of the big issues with authorities in New York - they were invented precisely because they are independent of state government (they're designed as a workaround for various inconvenient state laws). The state has no direct control over the MTA or any other authority, and the authority's finances are intentionally kept separate. For all intents and purposes, authorities are simply very large non-profit organizations that have been granted broad powers by the state to provide public services, and have governing boards comprised of state and local officials, among others.

Some authorities are actually completely financially independent; they're not subsidized at all. The MTA is not in that category, but it does make more of its own money than any other transit system in the world. Its subsidy is relatively small in percentage terms, and it is not direct government funding, like an agency. It's an agreement that needs to be negotiated and renewed every few years.

I'm not disagreeing that this stuff can't be copyrighted, I'm just saying it's not for the reason you provided. There's no direct link between any NY authority and the taxpayer. There are indirect links, but it's not an unbroken chain between authority and taxpayer.

Well since MTA is a regulated monopoly (like the phone and electric companies) one could argue that in exchange for being granted that monopoly by the State, they are obligated to provide schedules free of charge and without copyright. Else, their monopoly will be revoked, and the monopoly given to someone else to operate, like Conrail.

This is the same argument used to force Comcast, Cox, and other cable monopolies to provide free CSPAN service. "Do as we tell you to do, or else you will lose your

I hate PC comments like yours. It should not be anyone's responsibility to warn blazing fools not to put steaming hot coffee in their lap and try to drive, or not to iron clothes while wearing them, or that a jar of peanuts contains (wait for it) PEANUTS! Yeah that last one is a real warning message, pick a jar of peanuts and read it for your self. Anyone ignorant enough to not know that a jar of peanuts contains peanuts needs a lifetime treatment at the local electrical shock therapy center.
I am so tired of this "label anything because someone might sue you for them being an idiot" fad. It should be an affirmative defense of anyone that you are not responsible for other people being too stupid to live. Maybe that was your point. I hope so.

Yeah that last one is a real warning message, pick a jar of peanuts and read it for your self. Anyone ignorant enough to not know that a jar of peanuts contains peanuts needs a lifetime treatment at the local electrical shock therapy center.

There are so many things wrong with this sentiment, from an engineering perspective, I hardly know where to begin. This flies in the face of almost everything we've learned about software development in over the last thirty years. But I'm posting belatedly, so I won't belabour the point.

1. common sense is not common2. use case blindness: not everyone is standing in a brightly lit retail store, carefully contemplating the interior contents of each individual bottle, with a full slate of ordinary human sens

Doesn't matter what press the MTA faces. There's no other way to get that many people all around NYC. Roads are congested as-is. Take away the biggest form of mass transit there, and everyone will run back because nobody can get anywhere.

What happens when he has a typo or transcribes a column wrong and borks an entire train? Customers get angry because they miss expected connections and blame MTA not Schoenfeld.

This is bullshit. When they arrive at the station and their train is not there, usually they'll ask someone working there or start to complain to someone working there, at which point they'll get informed about the facts of life.

The problem is, a third party service is required to spread the information. In the UK, there are at least 10 different websites, where you can search, book and print anything you could possibly need (including a bus service or a taxi at the destination), and if you're on the move already, you can just send an SMS, and they'll text you back with the information you need.

This is bullshit. When they arrive at the station and their train is not there, usually they'll ask someone working there or start to complain to someone working there, at which point they'll get informed about the facts of life.

You've obviously never been in a public facing position with an angry New Yorker who's Tom Tom is telling them to go down a road that's closed either. Why should they require their staff to put up with rude and aggressive asshats when the situation is caused by something totally ou

Whiney pusses and crybabies. "Oh, I missed the train by a minute and a half, now I'll have to wait for FIFTEEN MINUTES for the next train!!"

Oh boo hoo. He should have pulled his pecker out of - wherever - a few minutes earlier, so that he could have some TIME to catch the train. If his source of information was faulty, well, he had an opportunity to use another source. Why didn't he pick up a dead-tree version of the schedule last month? Finally, I'm forced to ask - who gives a damn if this inept dilrod is late for some stupid appointment, anyway? He's been riding trains most of his life, and hasn't figured out how things work yet? Screw him.

>>>Why should they require their staff to put up with rude and aggressive asshats

Because that's what they are paid to do. Just the same as when I worked for JCPenney years ago, I was required to put-up with angry customers complaining about broken products, or late fees on credit cards, or whatever. It's called customer service, and you are expected to be patient with the customer, whether he's happy or angry.

You've obviously never been in a public facing position with an angry New Yorker who's Tom Tom is telling them to go down a road that's closed either. Why should they require their staff to put up with rude and aggressive asshats when the situation is caused by something totally out of their control?

Because it's public transport, not a gentleman's carriage service. If the public are rude and aggressive enough, you call the police in.

I'm sure they wouldn't disagree that it is in their best interest to make the information as widely available as possible. However, you'll note that it says that Schoenfeld enters the data manually.

There is a simple solution here, which I'm sure everyone on Slashdot has already spotted. OTOH paying a lawyer vast sums of money to sue people is easier than paying a programmer moderate sums to add a formatted text download to their website.

No, you're thinking of the federal government, and even then it's not quite what you think it is. Unless the government of the state of New York has a law whereby it disclaims copyrights in works it creates, it has federal copyrights in them. This having been said, it would probably be good for the Copyright Act to make all governmental bodies ineligible for copyright, on the grounds that it's no incentive to them. For example, the MTA's decisions regarding creating and publishing a schedule are going to be

It's not on grounds of inelligibility for copyright as an entity that this will be thrown out (you're right about that, the gov can hold copyright), it's on the grounds that facts cannot be copyrighted. They may have a case for the composition of the schedule, but as far as the dates, times, and train numbers, they've got nothing. So unless he's doing a scan-paste operation to get the schedules on his app (which I can't imagine, but it's possible), he's in the clear. They're just trying to bully him.

If I were him I'd counter-sue on the basis of a frivolous lawsuit and harassment, and seek damages matching any lawyer fees and lost income due to the trial.

I don't think granting copyright to a municipality for a train schedule is in any way constitutional. Of course, as Lessig failed at pointing out to the Supreme Court, neither is a limitless copyright term.

They are afraid terrorists will get a hold of the schedule and to keep that from happening they are going to stealth the whole process. Buses and trains will now be randomized. Numbers and routes will change spontaneously. Sometimes trains will run on bus routes and buses on train routes. Every once in a while one (either a train or bus) will cross over to NJ, drive off in the pine barrens on its own and self destruct on the off chance it is carrying a terrorist. That will solve everything.

I don't follow. Having the info available would increase ridership. How is that in the MTA's interest? Its going to make the trains run slower. How can you expect them to keep schedules if the blasted riders keep getting on and off.

If you're referring to the subway, not Metro North, then no, there isn't a schedule. Trains run every 8 minutes. If they were to try and make a schedule with 8 minute intervals, any delays (which are inevitable, its a huge system) would quickly throw that out of what completely. Instead of late trains waiting for the next 8 minute interval, they just leave as soon as they can. New Yorkers know that if you miss a train, the next one isn't that far off.

There is ample evidence on Slashdot, if you're not too lazy to look,* of armchair lawyers coming up with perfectly reasonable precedents that the courts seemingly refused to cite in their decisions. Just because the precedent is there and seemingly applicable doesn't mean the court will follow it.

DNRTFA but there's no misconduct in sending what amounts to a cease & desist to someone. Anyone can do this, lawyer or not. A C&D is not a court action, it's just a scary looking letter on expensive paper.

There's some level of obvious invalidity past which it can become illegal, if it's coupled with monetary demands (doesn't seem to be the case here). If the sender of the C&D knew or should have known that the claim was frivolous, and demanded monetary settlement, at least one case [volokh.com] has held that to constitute criminal extortion.

At the risk of a tangent, the ancient Greeks actually had a specific derogatory word for people who brought frivolous suits for the purpose of extorting settlements or intimidating their targets: that's what the word sycophant [amazon.com] originally meant (it now means something else, more like "yes-man" or "toady"). And there was a considerable debate at the time over how widespread the problem was, and what sorts of legal reform, sanctions, or prosecution of egregious offenders could do something about it.

Damn near the same situation, though, although I'd say the MTA stands less of a chance in this case (raw data) than in that case (if one could argue that the map design, layout, coloring, etc. makes it enough of a unique piece to be able to claim copyright... how -did- that case end anyway?)

There's lots of precedent for maps being copyrighted works. Thomas Bros. (now owned by Rand McNally) include deliberate small errors in their maps (such as adding short cul-de-sacs that don't actually exist) to catch unlicensed reproduction.

But, a stream of times that public transit arrives at stops? Yeah, no, not copyrightable.

There is some precedence for preventing private distribution of public material. There was a company in Missouri a few years back charging a large fee to get a copy of freely available documents about your home. Since that was already illegal they got shut down. If it wasn't I suspect you'd end up with so many copy cats that it would eventually be difficult to find the actual government site.

India has a similar problem with all sorts of fake government offices popping up trying to rip off tourists.

NYC has more inhabitants than Copenhagen and the NYC metro area probably covers more ground than the greater Copenhagen area. As for the number of lines - I've no idea.

Then Copenhagen bus lines alone are comprised of more than 250 different lines. I for one would not want to try and carry that around with me. Much easier to use a computer. And that's only part of Denmark. I've no clue how many different lines there are if you just cover Denmark.

Because that represents more to carry/lose/forget?Because you don't always have the right paper ones for the route you are using?Because paper ones will eventually crumpled/torn/worn out?Because paper ones become outdated when names/numbers/routes change?Because paper ones make you figure out which operating schedule applies to the current date/time ?

Their iPhone app would actually be much more useful if it was location-aware, and could tell you the nearest stops or station, but it doesn't seem to have that

You can't copyright "facts." There have been debates and legal wrangling over phone books, schedules and sports statistics over the past 20 years or more to my recollection and every time, the courts decided that "facts" cannot be copyrighted -- only the organization, layout and presentation of the facts can be. All these other things like the blogs and software apps are at the VERY LEAST "derivative works" if anything at all related to the ownership of the data offered up through their original "official" sources.

And if facts ever become a form of intellectual property, you can pretty much kiss ALL human advancement goodbye. Imagine a world where facts and history are no longer available because some jackass corporation decided not to publish because it's not profitable enough.

if you had a patent on a cure for something it would be in your best interests to produce it and make money while the patent is still active. if you had a cure and held it as a trade secret, your best interests (financially at least) are to sit on it. this can, and commonly does, happen in labs all the time. according to my sister, who's in that line of research, there's a cure for the herpes simplex virus out there sitting on a shelf that will never see the light of day because treating the symptoms of her

You should really think your argument through. Yes, history books are copyrighted, but the facts they verbalize are not. You or anyone else are able to use the information as reference with which you may create your own history book. Once again, it is the fact that can be copied, not the book.

As for video game data? I would have to say it depends on the data. If it were scores or other statistical data, I would say "no" it's not copyrightable. On the other hand, if the data in a game is an intrinsic p

There can be no rational discussion about copyright until people acknowledgethat current copyright laws, created almost entirely to meet corporate interests,are completely out of whack with people's expectations and with any semblance offairness or social good for individuals.

This means that *NOTHING* created by artists, musicians, or *ANY* ofthe culture created today will move into the public domain in your lifetime(expected lifetime) unless the people or companies who control the rights letyou have access to it through licensing or sales. You will die first beforethe vast majority of today's' culture is available to you legally.

That is absurd. It is not how the intellectual property system was everintended to work.

This means that *NOTHING* created by artists, musicians, or *ANY* of
the culture created today will move into the public domain in your lifetime
(expected lifetime) unless the people or companies who control the rights let
you have access to it through licensing or sales.

Time to start knocking off the creative element in our society so that we can get that 70 clock to start ticking.

Luckily, I live in a nation where copyright laws specifically only forbid for-profit unlicensed copying of works, and thus non-profit sharing of such works, whether over the torrent protocol, ftp or sneakernet, is strictly licit.

Concert recordings - most concerts are recorded & the recordings are buried unless the tour company decides to make a tour album. Phish & The Greatful Dead being 2 exceptions since they both have publicly stated they want people to bootleg the concerts.

Music Recordings from the 20s through the 40s - most don't exist because the masters were thrown away when the music stopped being profitable.

Great question. I don't have a great answer. Not everyone sees the current situation as a problem, which is copyright is the way it is today.

Here is what I think, and from that, others perhaps will understand why I think the current situation is unreasonable.

Intellectual property, like property, is a complete social fiction - its a very useful one, but nonetheless - a fiction.

Property is a big unspoken social agreement we have that assigns resources to individuals and entities and gives them superior rights of control over those resources. This assignment we call "ownership", and is a critical part to nonviolent resource distribution with many independent entities. In civil society it is simply given that this property mapping of things to people/organizations is "real", but in fact it is only supported, like all rules, (both laws and social mores) if people generally agree - both agree that the rules are reasonable, and agree that they each will (in the vast majority) follow those rules. If people don't agree, laws don't work.

Intellectual property extends the idea of this big shared social mapping of resources (property) to intangible "intellectual" creations (written words, music, video and most anything translatable into computer bits). The basic idea of intellectual property says that if one entity (person, company) did a lot of work in creating something, they should have superior rights to control it for a while. By itself, this is a very reasonable idea.

On the other hand, there is no physical basis to support property rights on information objects like there are on working land or creating physical things. Many would argue extremely convincingly that in a highly connected world, most people would be much better off if there were no intellectual property at all. That only those large organizations profiting from culture creation and limiting access to culture would be those harmed by eliminating IP entirely.

However, most important to the debate from my perspective is one of culture. The shared actions of humans that create the beauty, education, entertainment, and everyday existence for human beings is now encoded very often in digital information used to create experiences we all share. The fundamental question at hand is this: are we better off with human experience owned by corporations, or not? To me, this is the essence of the whole copyright debate - it has nothing to do with the specifics of law or legality, the politics of lobbying groups, or even the money people make off IP - it has to do with what kind of entity gets to create and control human culture, and whether it happens primarily by and for individuals in an open way, or whether it happens primarily under corporate ownership in a closed way.

Currently, we unequivocally have the latter. Large corporations primarily own the most valuable and most widely shared cultural elements in all 1st-world countries. The length of copyright basically only benefits and perpetuates corporations now. Governments with WIPO and other treaties are trying to enforce long, strong copyright protections globally. Its not individuals' creative expression driving how we live, how we think, how we get news and information, how we are entertained, how we are educated - but rather (and I'm being extremely general here) - it is corporations. These statements are extremely broad and there are many counter examples, but I'm referring to the largest factors and the most momentum in society.

I see it as unreasonable that culture created today will never be available to me openly and legally in my lifetime. The only reason the system works this way is because large companies profit more from IP working this way than other ways. The social fiction of IP is no longer a good deal for the individual in this case. This basic understanding that this legal fiction is no longer a good deal for individuals is why so many people redistribute mus

This means that *NOTHING* created by artists, musicians, or *ANY* of the culture created today will move into the public domain in your lifetime (expected lifetime) unless the people or companies who control the rights let you have access to it through licensing or sales.

Why exactly is this a problem?

We are shaped by the culture we live in. Would you prefer one based on sharing or selfishness?

I never get tired of listening to the silly reasons people come up with when the *actual* reason is "We hear you're making money off of something. We aren't sure how, but we'd like to be making money off of it instead."

This is why we need the power to compel referendums for city or county wide issues, and make sure the heads of all departments can be kicked out at the next yearly election by direct democratic action.

Get 1% of the population to sign a petition, get your spot on the ballot, and voila! Government officials miraculously stop acting like they own the place. I know they have some similar policies out West, but know of none in the East.

I'll take copyright for $200, Alex.
Copyright is defined as "The legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work"
What is the MTA schedule?
Sorry, that's incorrect.

To allow someone else to utilize this information diminishes the power of the New York MTA. It's really all about control. The more ignorant people are the better off the government and corporations are.
Too bad most people choose to be ignorant.

So what if he increments every time listed in the schedule by 1 minute? Then it bears little resemblance to the original text but is still useful. The added plus is that in order to show that his schedule is based on their schedule, they have to violate the DMCA.

The metro north transit has a copyright on the schedule they produced, i.e. styling, layout but they cannot copyright the data within it. If he scrapes the data by hand entering or even an automatic reading of the page and produces a new schedule with it it is an original work.

"Copyright
All content on the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) website (http://www.bart.gov) including the collection, arrangement, assembly and presentation of pages and all logos, maps, text, images, feeds and databases are the property of BART or its content suppliers and are protected by copyright laws.

You may not use the BART logo, the BART map or any other content from the BART website without express written permission in advance from BART."

One hand taketh, another hand giveth.http://www.bart.gov/developers/ [bart.gov]It appears that BART has said to the scrapers; "Here is the data you need in raw form along with some suggested tools you can integrate our schedules into your applications."On the whole, it looks like BART has embraced these applications rather than raise a stink on them.

I think that got thrown out of court; rail and bus information is public domain. They're not obligated to provide it in an easily fetchable format, but it's perfectly ok to republish it as long as you make it clear that you're not the original source.

Even more than that, information is in the public domain. You cannot copyright the fact that a particular train is supposed to arrive at a particular stop at a particular time. You may be able to copyright your layout of your brochure, and the nifty graphics you put all over it, but there is no creative expression to the fact of a bus schedule.

And still more, is convenience and efficiency so anathema to government that they feel the need to stamp it out wherever they see it, even if it's not costing them

I think the problem that they have, is a loss of control over the information.

If something goes wrong, intentional or otherwise, and the schedule that all these people look at through the phone is incorrect... who's gonna get the angry customer call? The train company.

That's the first thing I've read here that actually makes any sense as to why the MTA would be doing this, though I adamantly disagree. As was previously stated, this is the city transit authority -- by definition a public entity. They have no business doing anything with copyright, nevermind suing a tax payer for using the information!

This is almost as bad as the news that the tax payer "bailed out" banks are raking in record profits by increasing overdraft and other fees -- talk about biting the hand that feeds you...

But this isn't Germany. I don't know what Germany's copyright law says about it, but in the US you can't copyright data -- only its representation. Douglas Adams coupd copyright HHGTG, but he could't copyright the act of blowing up the earth, or putting a fish in your ear to translate.

In the US, you can't copyright a phone book, OR a bus schedule. This is the most absurd thing I've heard of all week, and it's Friday.

Three, mechanically reproducing a map *is* a violation of copyright. Re-drawing it yourself isn't, but careful... a lot of map printers deliberately include small errors in their maps to catch people who just use their work as a source. You better be prepared to drive the whole terrain and verify it yourself.